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"Magic is what makes fantasy fantastic," someone says, "you can't apply rules to them or else it loses wonder!" I respond, "Sure, but if you want to write them you will certainly want to know how they work." Writing is all about execution, and I find applying some basic laws of physics to magic systems make them more understandable and realistic. Here, I'm going to outline my basic method for developing a magic system.Column by Chaos2651Discuss it in our forums.

I actually made a post about the ending some time ago, explaining why it absolutely had to end the way it did, and that any other ending would have been a much deeper betrayal of the characters than their death.

Before I get to this point, though, I would like to say that Elend's and Vin's deaths were not suicides in the usual sense of the word. Technically it may be true, but the word carries connotations that I don't think really apply. Suicide implies that the death was somehow senseless or driven by an internal, emotional need to die. In a cosmic sense, Elend and Vin died in battle in order to save the rest of their troops. They knew it would kill them, yes, but if they could have found a way around their deaths, they would have taken it. But they couldn't, so instead of backing out or being cowards, they faced it with all the courage they could muster.

I think this is important because they had asked so many other people to die for their cause. "Redshirts" is a good way of putting it. Vin and Elend had to prove their core integrity, that all the terrible things they had done to others over the series were justified; that they were not tyrants or monsters but simply people trying to do their best. What better way to show it than to sacrifice themselves, rather than others, when that was what their cause truly brought them to?

happyman, I can totally see where you're coming from. I'm not saying that having them both die at the end wasn't an excellent way to tie up the series in terms of plot.

Here's another angle that just came to my mind. You mention Elend AND Vin had to "prove" their own integrity. So tell me why Elend had to die? The reasoning to me seems like this:Elend is alive -> Vin loves Elend -> Vin wants to be with Elend -> Vin values life with Elend.Therefore Elend commits suicide (senselessness fully implied) to force Vin to comply with his ideals and do what he wants by removing any incentive for her to remain in the world of the living.

Wow. Haha. That's probably the ultimate way of being used right there, proving what I'd always thought wasn't true - that Vin is just a knife for Elend's ideals. If Vin had truly been willing to "Sacrifice" her life and been the saint upholding her integrity and noble ideals that you make her out to be, Elend wouldn't have had to die. (On that point - if she HAD been willing to die, she could have saved Elend by killing Ruin and therefore freeing Marsh) And I think that's why I like Vin - because she isn't the idealist. She might not be empress, and Elend was certainly best for that role, but SHE started the Empire. She slaughtered innocents in cold blood and felt nothing but like a god.

Also, one last point that makes the ending rather muted - the future of the Mistborn world. Elend was the best ruler for the Empire. Without Vin at his side I could've seen him still succeeding. But with neither Vin nor Elend, I find it hard to imagine anyone else being able to hold the empire together...Breeze? Cares too little. Spook? Too young and with no understanding of politics. Cett? Maybe a good man inside, but we've had his flaws pointed out enough that we should be familiar. He lost his own kingdom.

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Everything we do in this world , everything that matters , we do for love... everything bad, everything really bad that was ever done was done for love. ~ Ziani Vaatzes

Also, one last point that makes the ending rather muted - the future of the Mistborn world. Elend was the best ruler for the Empire. Without Vin at his side I could've seen him still succeeding. But with neither Vin nor Elend, I find it hard to imagine anyone else being able to hold the empire together...Breeze? Cares too little. Spook? Too young and with no understanding of politics. Cett? Maybe a good man inside, but we've had his flaws pointed out enough that we should be familiar. He lost his own kingdom.

What "empire"? Sazed brought all the storage caches together, and there were probably at most a few tens of thousands of people in them. That's not an empire; that's hardly even a city. Whatever other people may have survived (a topic that if memory serves got RAFO'd earlier in this thread), they'd be in other nations, at least initially.

Remember also that Spook has help. Breeze may not be much of a statesman, but he knows people like few others. He has the de-spiked Citizen and his sister (her name is slipping my mind ATM), who both have good experience with governance. There's probably some remnants of Elend's assembly hanging around, Cett, though imperfect, could help, and, shoot, he's even got Yomen.

If anything, there are too many people that might try and hold things together.

happyman, I can totally see where you're coming from. I'm not saying that having them both die at the end wasn't an excellent way to tie up the series in terms of plot.

Here's another angle that just came to my mind. You mention Elend AND Vin had to "prove" their own integrity. So tell me why Elend had to die? The reasoning to me seems like this:Elend is alive -> Vin loves Elend -> Vin wants to be with Elend -> Vin values life with Elend.Therefore Elend commits suicide (senselessness fully implied) to force Vin to comply with his ideals and do what he wants by removing any incentive for her to remain in the world of the living.

Wow. Haha. That's probably the ultimate way of being used right there, proving what I'd always thought wasn't true - that Vin is just a knife for Elend's ideals. If Vin had truly been willing to "Sacrifice" her life and been the saint upholding her integrity and noble ideals that you make her out to be, Elend wouldn't have had to die. (On that point - if she HAD been willing to die, she could have saved Elend by killing Ruin and therefore freeing Marsh) And I think that's why I like Vin - because she isn't the idealist. She might not be empress, and Elend was certainly best for that role, but SHE started the Empire. She slaughtered innocents in cold blood and felt nothing but like a god.

Also, one last point that makes the ending rather muted - the future of the Mistborn world. Elend was the best ruler for the Empire. Without Vin at his side I could've seen him still succeeding. But with neither Vin nor Elend, I find it hard to imagine anyone else being able to hold the empire together...Breeze? Cares too little. Spook? Too young and with no understanding of politics. Cett? Maybe a good man inside, but we've had his flaws pointed out enough that we should be familiar. He lost his own kingdom.

When Elend let himself die, I don't think he was doing it to let Vin go. I don't think he had any plans beyond destroying the Atium and giving everybody else some time to live. For instance, by keeping Marsh's attention, Marsh wasn't going into the caverns trying to kill people to get at the Atium; Elend was the only person around who had even the slightest chance against him, and so fighting Marsh and surviving and helping those less capable survive was his responsibility. It was a desperate move, but the circumstances were very desperate. While I suspect that the side effects of his death were not accidental from Preservations viewpoint, I don't think it's what he had in mind, and hence I don't classify it the way you do.

You seem to think that the way things turned out was what everybody had meant to happen. While I think that what happened is indeed what Preservation meant to happen, I know that the protagonsists didn't know what would happen. From their more limited perspective, they were just living up to their ideals. And thus I don't see anything wrong with the ending.

For me, Vin and Elend's deaths seemed unnecessary at first as well. Kelsier's death was also depressing at first. But Kelsier's death had time to sink in, and by the end, it seemed completely necessary and normal. Just like when someone dies in real life; you get used to it after a while, and even though you still may be sad about it, life goes on and you go on with it. The problem I think many people had with Vin and Elend is that the book ended right after they died, so they were still attached to the characters. Life didn't go on, it stopped right in that tragic moment. I think that reading the next series (once it comes out) should give the deaths time to sink in, and eventually Vin and Elend will be just like Kelsier.

I finally get to post here!!! I just finshed the book yesterday and I thought this book was well thought out. With me I thought the turn around with Sazed being the HoA was really cool. I looked back to the first book and I saw how much Vin changed over the year and I liked that. To see a charater change liked Vin who went from a street urchin to one of the most powerful Mistborn and the Empress was also really cool.

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Nature's first green is goldHer hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower;But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay.

After reading book two my friends and I were convinced that Elend was the Hero of Ages.

What I kind of wonder is who wrote the prophecies about the Hero of Ages? It doesn't seem like either Ruin or Preservation had any idea that it was Sazed.

(Also, I would change the title of the thread even more, trust me, it sucks to have the ending spoiled online. I accidentally read that Sazed was the Hero of Ages in a thread here before I even opened the book I had bought. I'd put something like SPOILER - How The Hero of Ages Ends)

Well I spent forever thinking about who it would be after Brandon said it was in the epigraph for the prologue. The line he'd hold the future of the world on his arms gives it away if you think about it.

I actually expected it to be Sazed even before the book came out, but that was more from hints gleaned from what was left of the prophecies than any deeper insight (his height, if you must know. Brandon drew just a bit too much attention to it in the first book). I knew he was the hero, though, when he thought in book three "I, unfortunately, am in charge". However, I must say that how he was the hero of ages came as a surprise, and was deeply gratifying. His life was not wasted; exactly the opposite.

The powers seem to change the people who use them. When the Lord Ruler took preservation's power, he never really tried to make anything new, but simply tried to preserve what was left, as Sazed noted in the chapter bumps. If we take this type of effect and extrapolate it across enormous spans of time, it's not hard to see how Preservation and Ruin, even if originally people (as implied by the existence of bodies) would come to embody their powers almost exclusively. (Note especially that Ruin seems to claim that he hasn't always controlled the power when he says effectively "Until you've used it as long as I have, you'll never get the hang of it.")

So if this is true, what will Sazed become by virtue of holding both of them? Or will they cancel out and he will sit at the fulcrum, balanced?

Of course, because Feruchemy is the power of balance, I suppose it makes sense for him to have both powers. Maybe only a feruchemist could have taken both?